Fox Broadcasting Company, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The recently settled defamation dispute between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems for almost $800 million brings up a lot more about Fox than money. First off, who has close to a billion dollars laying around to buy themselves out of lawsuit and not miss a meal? It says something about Fox News‘ cash flow and their current business model.
From what I can garner Fox News‘ net worth is somewhere north of $16 billion. In comparison, CNN‘s net worth is around $6 billion and MSNBC ‘s just under $60 million. An $800 million loss of any sort would have put a serious hitch in CNN‘s giddy-up and would have wiped out MSNBC. Fox News seems to shake it off like a wet dog drying off.
The Fox News‘ settlement brings up what really is the “News” aspect of Fox News. It begs the question what kind of news gathering company is Fox News. I can’t get the image of Groucho Marx responding to an indignant Blonde, who feels she had been insulted, demanding an apology by asking, stupidly, “What kind of woman do you think I am?” To which Grocho says, “We have already established that. Now we are haggling over the price.”
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
photo flickr
To be honest I gave up on Fox News as a news source long time ago. The last couple of years or so it seems that Fox News is more of an entertainment company writing the news (and making the news) instead of reporting it. The veracity of their storyline, in my mind, is suspect; or it is your lie but I can tell it anyway that makes me money. Pushing an alleged false narrative on your viewing public seems to pay off handsomely. Just look at tobacco and pharmaceutical companies that have made billions pushing addictive products on an unsuspecting consumer. So why not News.
Fox News has found the right business/news model that treats the news as a running soap opera. It brings people back to the set every night for another episode of As the Country Burns, One Lib to Own and The Guiding Right. Throw in some fantasy and the soap opera model pays out handsome dividends. It is the $500 slot machine that keeps paying out. However, it is not American Exceptionalism but American Extravagance. As long as you are making bucketfuls of money its okay until its not. And then we wonder why.
Since its fraternity with Donald Trump, Fox News has played fast and loose with the facts. They have taken up the Trump administration’s view that “alternative facts” like the “Demon Cat” that haunts the halls of the White House is a real feline that can expand itself to the size of an elephant. News at times can go beyond believable especially when it involves a “Florida man allegedly throw(ing) an alligator into Wendy’s.” And Florida men are playing prominently in the news of late since Trump moved to Palm Beach.
And let’s throw in another element to the news: fantasy. Fantasy takes us into riding unicorns or dealing with dragons and dungeons. And I guess that is why it is so easy to peddle stories that can go beyond imagination to the domain of fantastic, alternative facts. Once it’s spoken on prime time it becomes reality. Take for instance the growing interest in unidentified ariel observations; UFOs to those born before 1980. The “little green men” from outer space have become Jews with orbiting space lasers. Just as believable as ET calling an Uber for a ride home. Anything is possible in the realm of fantasies.
Fantasy sells. Take the movie Avatar: The Way of the Water. The movie took in $2 billion. It is estimated that the production costs where $250 million. Some sources think it was more like $350-to-$400 million. However you slice it there is a nice chunk of profit investing in one of the top grossing movies of all time.
As I said, making money is okay until it is not. Take Dominion Voting Systems, a company that took umbrage to being the unpaid-credited main star of Fox News‘ fantasy-reality shows, decided the fantasy of stolen election had gone on long enough. The fabrications being spewed by some should have been a mini X-File series. There may have been more truth watching Fox Mulder and Dana Scully investigating The Untold Truth of 2020 Election then the stories peddled by anchor-heads at Fox News. At least any “untruths” would have been protected under literary license and disclaimers. In the end the those pushing the stolen election theory on the News could find themselves with a ticket in their spaceship headed back to their home world. So far Tucker Carlson is the only one to leave the planet.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
The Book Designer
The truly sad state of affairs is the irreparable harm Fox News‘ business model has done to the news gathering process in general. It appears that the extreme ends of the political spectrum drive the storylines; and profits. It has forced me to look at news in a completely different light. It is always good to question what you think you believe. But I look at the news the way Olympic judges evaluate figure skating. Olympic judging throws out the high and low scores and then averages the middle scores. I throw out the far right hysteria and the far left agitation and look for something in the middle. This concept only works some of the time.
It has been said that Alan Barth coined the phrase in 1943 that “News is only the first rough draft of history.” If that is so, when historians reach back into the news archives for that first rough draft of the year 2023 what will historians or anybody think when they view Fox News from this era: The X Files: History is out there somewhere–but not here.
mystoryorhistory 